This invention relates generally to media systems and, more particularly, to parental controls for media systems supporting video mosaics.
There are many devices in use in media systems today for controlling access to content (e.g., video or audio content) as a function of the nature of the content (e.g., the amount of sex or violence portrayed within the content). For example, using one common parental control technique, program content rating information may be sent along with a television signal (e.g., in the vertical blanking interval (VBI)) or stored in a program description database, and may be used to selectively block access to undesirable or unsuitable content.
The program content rating information may include ratings for broadcast programming (e.g., Motion Picture Association of America ratings such as G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17) as well as ratings of individual categories of program nature, such as violence, language, nudity, and sexual content. Generally, parental control systems today allow users to exclude or block content meeting or exceeding certain ratings criteria.
However, current parental control schemes have shortcomings. For example, due to the ever-increasing number of channels and services available in today's media systems, real-time video assets are being presented to users in a more user-friendly way. For example, remotely-generated video mosaics may present multiple video sources to a user in a single screen or page. For a description of one illustrative remotely-generated mosaic environment, called “Video-Rich Navigation” (VRN), see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/395,380, filed Mar. 30, 2006. Remotely-generated mosaics enable users to access services and/or assets from video-rich menu screens and displays. These screens and displays may include a number of video windows, or cells, which may be filled with digital video, digital or analog broadcast channels, or composite video streams (e.g., MPEG-2 streams composed of several digital channels). Current parental control devices fail to adequately support these video mosaic screens because the screens are typically composited from a number of different video sources. Each video source may be associated with its own parental control information, such as ratings information, making traditional parental control techniques incompatible or inadequate to support these mosaics.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide parental control systems and methods with enhanced support for video mosaic screens. It would also be desirable to provide systems and methods for supporting enhanced parental control functionality for the individual screen elements in any remotely-generated video mosaic page.